Friday, May 30, 2014

I love the idea of Minimalism, but I can't quite go all the way there. Still I do believe decluttering what's not serving us makes all aspects of our lives richer and more full of joy.

Arianna Huffington's quest to get us to Thrive by talking about how overwhelmed we are and how money and power are not the only metrics of success is a long overdue conversation. Are we all going to take up meditation and sleep with no electronic devices in our bedrooms? We should, we totally should-- but it might take us some baby steps to get there.

So what can we do today, right now? Choose!

Choose what's most important. I'm just beginning to read the book Essentialism which focuses on eliminating the non-essential so you can do/have: less, but better. Love this concept and it reminded me immediately of studying photography. Cropping was my thing. I took decent photos but they were so much more meaningful when I got to cropping them. I shoot photos like I'm striving to live my life: get the big picture then focus in and rid it of everything that's distracting so the true essence comes out.

So above is my Twitter icon and to the left is the original photo. It's not a particularly flattering photo -not bad- but the reason I wanted to use it was because I was having a very happy day when I took it and I wanted to be reminded of it daily. To me the close-up version is all about my happy smile the full version just another photo to me.

Focusing in, cutting out, less but better is a great clarifier. We can do this with everything from food to parenting to work.

Better to enjoy a few Godiva chocolates then a one pound generic bar. Better to engage in quality activities and conversation with kids then to run them (and you) ragged with every activity under the sun. Better to kick-ass on one dynamic project then to be all over the place with mindless busy work and meetings.

Less in life is a little uncomfortable to get used to when we are such a more, more, more, busy, busy, busy society. But it's not working for us so maybe we -for sure I- need to try to get down to the essentials, crop out what's not needed, and focus in on less but better.